• Samsung has reportedly suspended
production of its flagship Galaxy Note 7
smartphone.• The replacement phones have also
malfunctioned — smoking, catching fire, or burning
people.
• This could be a disaster for the company for years to
come.

And even better: Expectations for the iPhone 7, the newest phone
from Samsung's archrival, Apple, were tepid. Only modest
improvements — better camera, faster speeds, the controversial
removal of the headphone jack — were expected, giving the Note 7
a real shot at being the smartphone of 2016.

The owner who was hospitalised was in contact with a Samsung
representative when the rep accidentally texted the person
saying: "I can try and slow him down if we think it will matter,
or we just let him do what he keeps threatening to do and see if
he does it."

The implication is that Samsung was trying to stop the customer
from speaking out — not a good look.

What's more, the customer said this all happened before
the Southwest Airlines incident but that Samsung did nothing to
publicly warn customers about possible risks posed by replacement
Note 7 devices.

Carriers and smartphone sellers are
now abandoning the Note 7. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon
are all letting US customers return their replacement devices for
different phones.

This is a godsend to Google

The timing for all this couldn't be better for Google.

Last week, the California-based technology giant announced its
Pixel smartphone. It's a sleek, premium device clearly intended
to go head-to-head with major high-end smartphone manufacturers
like Apple — and Samsung.

The launch was peppered with sly digs and jokes at Apple's
expense, on everything from the camera bump on the iPhone 7 to
its lack of a headphone jack. And at £599 in the UK for the
smaller, 32 GB model, it will have the same base price point as
Apple's device.

After all, switching from one mobile platform (iOS) to another
(Android) is a pretty big deal. You need to port over all your
data, and there's no guarantee you'll get all the apps you want.
But Samsung customers are already using Android, and they're
already used to paying high prices for a premium device.

If you've historically been a Samsung customer, and you're in the
market for a new phone, what are you going to do? Go for the
phone that is exploding left, right, and centre — or the flashy
new Google phone that's running the same underlying software?

The Note 7 could haunt Samsung's business for years

To recap: Samsung's biggest smartphone of the year has turned
into the tech public-relations disaster of the decade,
unexpectedly boosting key competitors and hospitalising customers
in a catastrophe that even a billion-dollar recall hasn't been
able to fix.

The Note 7 debacle seems likely to generate serious concerns
(whether warranted or not) among customers about the quality of
its other phones — something that could harm its financial
prospects for years.

To put it bluntly, Samsung's reputation for quality is down the
toilet.